Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Feast of the Annunciation: God Sent the Angel Gabriel

And he came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. (Luke 1:28-31, Catholic Revised Standard)

That isn’t necessarily a perfect translation of Luke, so let’s see some others:

King James Version:

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

Most of the translations have “favored” in some sense or other. Some of them make the construction out to be a declarative sentence in its own right:

When the angel entered her home, he greeted her and said, "You are favored by the Lord! The Lord is with you." She was startled by what the angel said and tried to figure out what this greeting meant. The angel told her, "Don't be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. (God’s Word Translation)

Let’s be a little cautious. First off, it seems a bit odd (in this last translation) that Gabriel the great messenger would have to repeat himself: “favored by the Lord” followed 2 verses later by “you have found favor with God.” Here we have the singular event that all creation has been groaning for throughout the ages, and in which Gabriel gets to say all of 10 or so distinct things, and the translator has him repeating himself almost like a school boy.

Maybe not. Let’s go to the original Greek:

χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ.

Well, for those of us (like me) who are not comfortable with the Greek alphabet, here is a transposition:

Chaire, kecharitōmenē, ho kyrios meta sou!

Chaire is the greeting word, usually translated as “Hail”, though sometimes as “Rejoice”.

There is little debate among the translations about the last phrase, ho kyrios meta sou, which is always given as “the Lord is with you. “Ho” is the definite article, “kyrios” has same root as the well known “Kyrie” in the liturgy.

The problem comes with kecharitōmenē. Why? Because it is unique. It is a one-use word. It is not used anywhere else in the Bible. Or anywhere else, either. Luke seems to have made it for the purpose.

But the word is made up of pieces, and can be parsed out:

Grammatically, the wordkecharitomene is the feminine present perfect passive voice participle of a verb, specifically, the Greek verb χαριτόω (charitóō). In the passive voice, the verb means to have been made graceful, to have been endowed with grace.

Kecharitōmenē is broken up into
Ke-
Charitoo
-Mene

Charitoo is the root word, which is also what we find elsewhere as karitos, which is either “favor” or “grace”. It is “grace” – a supernatural gift – in emphasizing what it is that God gives; it is “favor” in emphasizing why He gives it. I use them nearly interchangeably here.

Mene makes it a passive participle: it is passive, implying that the person referred to is the recipient of the action, not the doer. Mary receives the grace or favor. We don’t actually have a single word for the passive voice of “to favor”, we have to use two words: “"be favored" is how the present passive voice would go (though "favored" looks past tense). Or "receives favor" if you want to be a little more directed about it.

It is in participle form: "being favored" or “receiving favor” would be the simple present. But ke- puts it in the present perfect tense. From the standpoint of the speaker’s moment, the original doing was done already, such as "have been favored" or “have received favor”. But with the participle, it means that her receiving of grace was done prior, but _remains_ so going forward, it continues into the present condition, so: “have been receiving favor”. Apparently it also implies a sense of completion, an emphasis on the culmination of the activity. Her gracefulness is accomplished, which would be more like “have been receiving grace in fullness” or perhaps “having been filled with grace” (though the latter looks more past tense than is ideal).

One last point about kecharitōmenē: Neither Aramaic nor Hebrew apparently have an ordinary superlative form, as we do with “-est” as a suffix. So they would show superlative sense in a different fashion. They would say something like "You are tall among men" or "You are wealthy among men" to mean "You are the tallest" or "You are the wealthiest". Gabriel uses that in the next sentence: “blessed are you among women”, and later on, we hear Elizabeth say the same thing. I.E. “most blessed.” And, apparently, the perfect passive participle form in Greek is actually used to convey the superlative, so: most favored, most graced. This gets us “Having been made highest / most fulsome in grace.”

“Full of grace”, though, is perhaps a little bit short of the bullseye, not least because that expression IS actually used in the Bible, in 2 places, with different words: πληρης χαριτος (pleres charitos), is used for St. Stephen in Acts and for Christ in John 1:14. At a minimum, we know that Luke would have known how to express “full of grace” straightforwardly, since he did so in Acts. We can also note that “full of grace” misses the passive form of kecharitomene, and leaves the superlative at best implicit.

Let’s step back and get at this from another direction, let’s talk about Gabriel. Earlier in the chapter, he visited Zachary. Here’s his greeting: But the angel said to him: Fear not, Zachary, for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.

Here’s another interesting point about Gabriel: he had already shown up, in the Old Testament, in Daniel. In fact, he visits Daniel a few times.

As I was yet speaking in prayer, behold the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly touched me at the time of the evening sacrifice. And he instructed me, and spoke to me, and said: O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee, and that thou mightest understand. 9:21-22

Then behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said to me, "O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words that I am about to tell you and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you." And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, "Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words. 10:10-12

One thing seems apparent: Gabriel doesn’t just start in talking to a person, he calls their name. (Then he has to calm their fears.) “Fear not, Zachary”, and “O Daniel”. And he isn’t afraid to name other names: Elizabeth your wife, John your son.

Here are some other ways the passage in chapter 10 is rendered:

Daniel, you who are highly esteemed,
Daniel, you are very precious to God,
O Daniel, man greatly loved,
O Daniel, a man greatly beloved,
Daniel, you are a man treasured by God.

Gabriel uses a somewhat similar expression of high regard as in Luke, (though not in superlative form), but he does so after naming Daniel specifically.

His one other appearance (in Daniel) is slightly different:

And it came to pass when I Daniel saw the vision, and sought the meaning, that behold there stood before me as it were the appearance of a man. And I heard the voice of a man between Ulai: and he called, and said: Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision. And he came and stood near where I stood: and when he was come, I fell on my face trembling, and he said to me: Understand, O son of man, for in the time of the end the vision shall be fulfilled. Daniel 8:15-17

So, even though here he does not call Daniel out by his own given name, Gabriel does address him by a word of salutation that directs his words to Daniel under a title. In this case, though, the salutation is a title that is a foreshadowing of the title Christ chooses to use for himself, and I am going to set this aside for the moment.

It remains, though, that in every case, Gabriel calls out to the person under some form of personal address, he doesn’t just start in on his message. It is really inconceivable that he would start his message by saying “You are someone God has favored”. He would name her, identify her. We would expect, then, that kecharitomene fulfills the same purpose.

But how so? Gabriel evidently uses either the person’s proper name, or their role for salvation history. Either way, he is doing it so as to distinguish them as being called forth personally. God hasn’t sent the angel to “anyone who might fit the bill”, He sends Gabriel to one specific person. It is the exact opposite of a king pointing in the direction of a servant and saying “hey you”. Gabriel is making it clear that he is sent specifically to this one person, and so his salutation addresses him, it names him, or gives his title.

So what does kecharitomene do with regard to Mary? It says that “this is THE ONE who has been receiving highest fullness in grace”. The one. That is to say, of all those to whom God has granted high favor, Mary is THE one on whom He has most showered his grace. Her condition of “most highly favored” is _distinctive_: it is special enough that when you have called her “the most highly favored one” you might as well have said “Mary”, because she’s the unique one such. (This also fits with the participle being used as a noun, which is common in Greek, and explains the KJV using “thou that art…” instead of some other versions that just create an adjectival phrase “highly favored…” with the noun implicit.)

So what we get from kecharitōmenē is that Mary:
is favored by grace,
superlatively: in highest and fullest way;
it has been done, but remains ongoing;
it is distinctive, singular, even unique: a name.

So, roughly speaking, Gabriel was naming Mary as “the singular one who has been receiving in full the most high favor”. (OK, I admit that’s clumsy.) Small wonder, then, that Mary was troubled and wondered what sort of greeting this might be. Wouldn’t you be a little concerned?

The KJV is really not bad at all, but “highly favored” misses a bit on the superlative, and the whole construction doesn’t quite do enough to distinguish the expression as a naming. It might have been better with “Hail, thou that art fulfilled as the most highly favoured one, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” *

It is of course true (as our Protestant friends will likely point out), that the Bible is not explicit that Mary was free from all sin, even as to original sin. It is logically possible that a creature such as Mary would be “highest” of those favored and still not be one free from all sin.

However, I would note two comments about that: (1) there is nothing in the nature of the world or grace or salvation that absolutely precludes God from so acting as to apply to a human the salvific merits of Jesus Christ’s redemption even from the first moment of his or her existence in conception, so as to be redeemed by grace and kept by grace free of other sins during life: God has sufficient power and authority should He want to do so. There is nothing about this that offends against Christ’s majesty or His being the one Savior of all.

And (2) since Christ followed the commandment “honor your father and your mother” perfectly, one could plausibly argue that his doing just as described in (1) above is exactly the most fitting way of carrying out the commandment, and this would also fit perfectly with Gabriel’s sobriquet kecharitomene. For if God had NOT kept her free from all sin, there would have been some further measure of grace she might have received, and her superlative position of grace would be of some lesser sort: that of the current Olympic champion, who might be ousted by some later champion. It would be a historically contingent “singularity,” not one of universality. But this fits ill with Elizabeth’s greeting as “most blessed” and Mary’s response “all generations shall call me blessed”. And, indeed, no other woman ever could have the singular position of being the human mother to God the Son, so it is more fitting that her position of being graced would be, also, the unique and definitively singular one, the unconditional pinnacle of being blessed and filled with grace: grace-filled from which nothing is lacking; not “highest” in the negative (accidental) sense that God has not decided to raise anyone higher, but “highest” positively because in her every space for grace has been filled up to the brim. In His love for her as His mother, he would fittingly want to keep her free from all sin, and bestow on her the same condition as the first Eve – but in this case by taking away the negative inheritance of sin from Adam even with the transmission of his (Adam’s) nature.

My soul doth magnify the Lord : and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded : the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold, from henceforth : all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me : and holy is his Name.

*I am no linguist nor Greek scholar. This is my own paltry analysis from looking at some 20 or so different attempts to clarify the word plus many explanations of the different forms, some Catholic and some Protestant and some neither. It suffers from my having no general knowledge of Greek, and if I have made a core error I apologize. I admit that not every point here is as firm and definitive as I should like: Some of it is interpolation and extrapolation, and half-educated guesswork. I don’t insist on it. If you can do better, have at it.

Comments (40)

Fascinating exegesis, Tony. Thanks for this. I know a lot of Protestants react with supreme skepticism, if not outright hostility, to the Immaculate Conception; but conceptually it has never bothered me. As you say,

nothing in the nature of the world or grace or salvation that absolutely precludes God from so acting as to apply to a human the salvific merits of Jesus Christ’s redemption even from the first moment of his or her existence in conception, so as to be redeemed by grace and kept by grace free of other sins during life: God has sufficient power and authority should He want to do so.

Indeed. And here you give solid evidence for a Scriptural basis for the doctrine.

I am a life long Catholic and appreciated this discussion about Mary the mother of Jesus being without sin. I do not know why Protestants have such a disdain for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Perhaps this will provide my sons and others with the opportunity to explain the Protestant understanding.

Mary found out that Elizabeth was pregnant from Gabriel at the Annunciation and the fact that she stayed with Elizabeth for three months is telling. Elizabeth was six months pregnant. Mary stayed for three months until Elizabeth delivered, so, she, literally set out in haste immediately after she heard the news. She was, probably, only a few hours pregnant, but such was her joy at hearing about her cousin that she forgot all about herself, such was her great love, and flew to Elizabeth's side. It is likely that no one except the Heavenly court and her knew she was pregnant. St. Joseph did not know of Mary's pregnancy until she began to show, probably upon her return from staying with Elizabeth. It was her absence followed by her showing that made people wonder what may have happened, because until Joseph took her into her home, she was a ward of the Temple, according to Tradition, and did not have any association with men.

She was not living with her parents. She was given to the Temple maidens when she was about nine. Her parents were not there when the Annunciation happened. Likely, no one else was. I do not know if she needed permission to leave the Temple to go to Elizabeth, since, if the Annunciation happened when she were twelve, given her maturity and wisdom, she was probably Bat Mitzvah and considered a legal adult (which may be why she was betrothed at that time).

She was not showing or glowing when she left to go to Elizabeth.

The Dominicans have a Feast of Mary's Presentation at the Temple, adopted from the pro to evangelical Gospel of James, I think, when Mary's parents gave her to the Temple maidens.

MC, even if we assume that Mary was presented to the Temple at the age of 3 as the Protoevangelium of James says, she was back in Nazareth for the Annunciation. That's what Luke says.

As far as I have ever heard, it would have been socially impossible for Mary to have been on her own in Nazareth, she would either have been sent back to her parents, or to another couple to have custody over her until she married. She could not have provided for herself on her own, and the Temple would not have sent her away to Nazareth without her being in someone's care. There might have been provision for virgins at the Temple, but there was nothing of the sort in Nazareth.

Likewise, it would have been socially impossible for a 14 year old young woman to have traveled the 3 or 4 days to Elizabeth on her own steam, departing her home in Nazareth without consulting her parents (or guardians).

While a boy or girl of 12 were considered "adult" for some purposes, (mainly, at that age they were adult enough to be bound to conform to the Law in all respects, that's what "Bar" or "Bat Mitzvah" would mean), that does not mean they were treated socially as completely independent at 12, like we think of "adults" today. No boy of 12 would have been expected to leave home and make his own way without material assistance. Jesus, after he was teaching in the Temple at age 12, "went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them", i.e. subject to Mary and Joseph. In any case, a young woman was not turned out on her own at 12, she stayed with her parents until she married.

Given that Mary and Joseph had gone through the first part of the marriage process - what Luke calls "betrothal" but is significantly more than being engaged - it is virtually inconceivable that Mary would have left Nazareth for 3 months without first consulting with Joseph, or (minimally possible) at least talking to her parents/guardians and getting their approval and confirmation that they would smooth it over with Joseph. After the betrothal, the husband is supposed to be able to set the date he chooses to come to the bride's parents' house to get her and bring her to their new home, and he can hardly do that if she has gone off somewhere else.

Going "with haste" does not imply going without making any plans for food or money along the way, and taking long enough to plan it out provides enough time to check with the older adults who have a right to know what she is doing. Luke doesn't say she left town within minutes of the Annunciation, he leaves room for it taking some time:

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,

St. Joseph did not know of Mary's pregnancy until she began to show, probably upon her return from staying with Elizabeth.

Granted. But since Mary / her guardians would have told him something of the reason she was going away (or the reason she left Nazareth), WHAT did he know? Would they have said Elizabeth her cousin was pregnant? How did they know that?

It would be interesting to compare Gabriel's salutation to Daniel as "highly esteeemed" in the Septuagint to Luke's Greek for the salutation to Mary. Many scholars have noted the similarity between the early chapters of Luke and the Septuagint. Some have thought that Luke was imitating the Septuagint. I am inclined to think that this is one of the only places where Luke may actually have been relying on a written source that was originally in Aramaic, perhaps written by Mary or her family. They, of course, would have been very familiar with the Septuagint.

Very good points. I have been wondering whether the angel spoke to Mary in Aramaic or Hebrew. In Daniel, the original text seems to be Hebrew, but in the Babylonian period the Israelites would have known Aramaic - possibly even have become more comfortable with Aramaic than with Hebrew. So even though the original text was Hebrew, the angel may have spoken Aramaic.

I have no clue how plausible it would be to attempt to try to "reverse engineer" what are the most likely ways of saying what Luke chose to present as kecharitōmenē, in Aramaic and Hebrew, to see if there can be a probable reconstruction of it, i.e. something that "fits" according to the ordinary uses of that language.

To me it seems impossible that Mary's story of what happened with Gabriel would not have been an extremely common story recounted in the 40's and 50's of the first century among Christian groups. And it seems (to me) highly implausible that Mary would have given Gabriel's words other than in the language Gabriel used - i.e. she would have used direct quotes. That story may have been put down in writing in the other of the two languages, but I doubt that the original verbal edition would have not been readily available to Luke if he passed through the Christian communities of Israel, Syria, etc. Aramaic, at least, was broadly used throughout the whole region.

I looked up the verse in Daniel. In both the Hebrew and in the Greek of the Septuagint, the "highly esteemed" word actually means "greatly desired" or "taken great delight in." It can even mean "covet." The Greek word is more specific than the Hebrew (Hebrew is an extremely "packed" language with many meanings in one word) and means specifically "desired."

The Protoevangelium of James clarifies a out of points and is quite an interesting read. The text may be found, here:

7. And her months were added to the child. And the child was two years old, and Joachim said: Let us take her up to the temple of the Lord, that we may pay the vow that we have vowed, lest perchance the Lord send to us, and our offering be not received. And Anna said: Let us wait for the third year, in order that the child may not seek for father or mother. And Joachim said: So let us wait. And the child was three years old, and Joachim said: Invite the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let them take each a lamp, and let them stand with the lamps burning, that the child may not turn back, and her heart be captivated from the temple of the Lord. And they did so until they went up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her, and kissed her, and blessed her, saying: The Lord has magnified your name in all generations. In you, on the last of the days, the Lord will manifest His redemption to the sons of Israel. And he set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her.

8. And her parents went down marvelling, and praising the Lord God, because the child had not turned back. And Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food from the hand of an angel. And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of the priests, saying: Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord? And they said to the high priest: You stand by the altar of the Lord; go in, and pray concerning her; and whatever the Lord shall manifest unto you, that also will we do. And the high priest went in, taking the robe with the twelve bells into the holy of holies; and he prayed concerning her. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by him, saying unto him: Zacharias, Zacharias, go out and assemble the widowers of the people, and let them bring each his rod; and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be. And the heralds went out through all the circuit of Judæa, and the trumpet of the Lord sounded, and all ran.

9. And Joseph, throwing away his axe, went out to meet them; and when they had assembled, they went away to the high priest, taking with them their rods. And he, taking the rods of all of them, entered into the temple, and prayed; and having ended his prayer, he took the rods and came out, and gave them to them: but there was no sign in them, and Joseph took his rod last; and, behold, a dove came out of the rod, and flew upon Joseph's head. And the priest said to Joseph, You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the virgin of the Lord. But Joseph refused, saying: I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl. I am afraid lest I become a laughing-stock to the sons of Israel. And the priest said to Joseph: Fear the Lord your God, and remember what the Lord did to Dathan, and Abiram, and Korah; Numbers 16:31-33 how the earth opened, and they were swallowed up on account of their contradiction. And now fear, O Joseph, lest the same things happen in your house. And Joseph was afraid, and took her into his keeping. And Joseph said to Mary: Behold, I have received you from the temple of the Lord; and now I leave you in my house, and go away to build my buildings, and I shall come to you. The Lord will protect you.

10. And there was a council of the priests, saying: Let us make a veil for the temple of the Lord. And the priest said: Call to me the undefiled virgins of the family of David. And the officers went away, and sought, and found seven virgins. And the priest remembered the child Mary, that she was of the family of David, and undefiled before God. And the officers went away and brought her. And they brought them into the temple of the Lord. And the priest said: Choose for me by lot who shall spin the gold, and the white, and the fine linen, and the silk, and the blue, and the scarlet, and the true purple. Exodus 25:4 And the true purple and the scarlet fell to the lot of Mary, and she took them, and went away to her house. And at that time Zacharias was dumb, and Samuel was in his place until the time that Zacharias spoke. And Mary took the scarlet, and span it.

11. And she took the pitcher, and went out to fill it with water. And, behold, a voice saying: Hail, you who hast received grace; the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women! Luke 1:28 And she looked round, on the right hand and on the left, to see whence this voice came. And she went away, trembling, to her house, and put down the pitcher; and taking the purple, she sat down on her seat, and drew it out. And, behold, an angel of the Lord stood before her, saying: Fear not, Mary; for you have found grace before the Lord of all, and you shall conceive, according to His word. And she hearing, reasoned with herself, saying: Shall I conceive by the Lord, the living God? And shall I bring forth as every woman brings forth? And the angel of the Lord said: Not so, Mary; for the power of the Lord shall overshadow you: wherefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of the Most High. And you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. And Mary said: Behold, the servant of the Lord before His face: let it be unto me according to your word.

12. And she made the purple and the scarlet, and took them to the priest. And the priest blessed her, and said: Mary, the Lord God has magnified your name, and you shall be blessed in all the generations of the earth. And Mary, with great joy, went away to Elizabeth her kinswoman, Luke 1:39-40 and knocked at the door. And when Elizabeth heard her, she threw away the scarlet, and ran to the door, and opened it; and seeing Mary, she blessed her, and said: Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, behold, that which is in me leaped and blessed you. Luke 1:34, 44 But Mary had forgotten the mysteries of which the archangel Gabriel had spoken, and gazed up into heaven, and said: Who am I, O Lord, that all the generations of the earth should bless me? Luke 1:48 And she remained three months with Elizabeth; and day by day she grew bigger. And Mary being afraid, went away to her own house, and hid herself from the sons of Israel. And she was sixteen years old when these mysteries happened.

This is only a small portion of the Infancy Narrative. Apparently, when Mary was twelve, the Temple priests looked at all widowers in the circuit of Judea for a suitable guardian for Mary - not, originally to marry her off, but to safe-guard her virtue, and Joseph, who was from Nazareth, had the sign that he was to be her guardian. Joseph took Mary into his home as a protector at twelve, thus bring Mary to Nazareth, where she remained while Joseph left to tend to his buildings - carpenters didn't just make furniture, with no supervision. According to the Protoevangelium, the Annunciation took place when Mary was sixteen and Joseph was not around. Mary made the purple and scarlet temple veil portions and during this period, she went to the well to get water, where she met Gabriel, alone. This is the Annunciation. She, then, brought the finished purple and scarlet veil portions to the temple priest, who blessed her. Then, she set out to Elizabeth. Obviously, this is not Scripture, but from this text, it seems as if Mary were sixteen, residing in relative freedom in Joseph's house, and Joseph did not give permission nor accompany her to see Elizabeth.

The rest of the chapter is interesting, as well.

The Protoevangelium of James isn't Scripture, which is somewhat sparse in its details, but it does tell a plausible story.

Much of it is plausible in some ways, less so in other ways. For example, it doesn't help explain what Joseph's relationship with her was "supposed to be", given that there was at the time no paradigm for a young maiden to be "placed" with a man not her relative, other than that of marriage. The notion of Joseph "keeping" her without actually attending on her much if at all for months at a time is rather doubtful. And if such signs and wonders had accompanied her in her youth, there is no way in the world that Jesus her son would not have been known among the priests and elders as the wondrous son of the already acknowledged wonder of a mother.

It also seems to contradict Luke fairly directly, in saying

But Mary had forgotten the mysteries of which the archangel Gabriel had spoken,

as Luke tells us twice that "Mary kept all these things", reflecting on them in her heart. And, besides, it is implausible to believe that the perfect woman, without sin to cloud her mind and will and memory, would fail to "keep" these things bearing as they did so nearly on the salvation that comes from the Jews.

I am inclined to consider the work to be a pious fable rather than solid historical document, possibly influenced by extant unwritten information about Mary but not merely a report of such.

I agree, Tony, that the Protoevangelicum of James is not consistent in some places. It is pretty hard to forget how one became pregnant, after all. I am not holding it up as a model of truth, just an historical document that the Church has taken some traditions from (Mary in the Temple, The miracle of St. Joseph being chosen as her husband, etc.).

I'm not a Roman Catholic, so I'm under no obligation to hold something as valid just because a Roman bishop said so. Thus I reject the Protoevangelium entirely. It vigorously defends the perpetual virginity of Mary, in defiance of the canonical account of Luke (as pointed out above). Somebody apparently was concerned that there wasn't much support for their theology in the Bible they had, so they added this to it. Such was the grip this version of the story had on the Church that it wasn't until after the Reformation that anyone was able to see what is obvious now, that Luke traces Mariam's ancestry back through her father Eli to David and ultimately to Adam himself (and thus Eve), showing Jesus to be the "seed of the woman" prophesied at the dawn of time. Instead they erected elaborate schemes by which Joseph, rather than Jesus, had two notable fathers.

Now, there's no wind but blows somebody some good, so it's not that I don't appreciate this discussion. I had never thought before, for example, that "Blessed art thou among women"could carry the superlative idea. But there seems to be a bit of misunderstanding about the perfect aspect of Greek. It refers to something done in the past that is still effective in the present. Thus Mariam was endowed with favor in the past, with lasting results. In other words, there's no fear that she will slip off her pedestal, without some mumbo-jumbo being performed at her conception. And there are huge problems with the idea; once again, it contradicts the strictly historical account of Luke, who quotes Mariam as referring to her Savior. If she wasn't capable of sin, then she wasn't able to have a Savior.
I have written a whole treatise on why "grace" is not an acceptable translation, but this is enough for now.
Daniel

“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin” - Martin Luther’s Sermon “On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” 1527

I'm not a Roman Catholic, so I'm under no obligation to hold something as valid just because a Roman bishop said so. Thus I reject the Protoevangelium entirely.

Daniel, you're in good company rejecting the Protoevangelium, because plenty of Roman Catholics do too. It's not part of ANY Christian's canon of Scripture, including the Catholic Church's. As I indicated, I don't put much stock in it, and it did not influence my analysis of Luke.

I have written a whole treatise on why "grace" is not an acceptable translation, but this is enough for now.

I am perfectly fine with translating it as "favor" if that's what you prefer, and I intended "grace" here primarily in the sense that would be compatible with that of "favor", not in the technical Catholic sense of the word. An additional connotation, so that we can attribute to God's action something of which we may speak as being "completed" or "done", is I think a less definite addition to the translation, and I don't insist on it. Though I do think that translating "favor" without that sense of completion loses something that is also at at least suggested in the superlative "blessed are you among women" and the rest of the passage, namely, that the favor God has for Mary (or Miriam) is a favor that changes her. It is not merely an extrinsic act on God's part looking on her with a kindly eye but leaving her unchanged. God's favor and blessings do things to the person.

And there are huge problems with the idea; once again, it contradicts the strictly historical account of Luke, who quotes Mariam as referring to her Savior.

I absolutely insist, as do you, that Luke (and all of the Gospels) must be interpreted as Jesus being her Savior. So we are in agreement there.

I don't see why you declare that Jesus would not be her Savior if the operation of that saving were applied by God to Mary right at the moment of her conception, instead of later. In that picture, it is true that she would never have been the actual subject of the sin which the rest of us receive as our inheritance from Adam. Aside from the supernatural intrusion of God's action, she would have received that state of sin with the reception of her human nature, which appears to be the natural result of human generation in us fallen humans. Hence, her being without Adam's sin could only be caused by God's preserving her from it by an action distinct from (and upon) nature. And since we attribute God's doing so to the very same motive as His granting the rest of reprieve from the condemnation we are subject to due to sin - Christ's redemptive passion and death - it would be Jesus alone who saved her from sin. As He saves us. There is but one Savior of all men.

Also, since God is not in time as we are, but is eternal, it seems unfitting to attribute to God an inability to preserve Mary from the sinful state AT the moment of conception, while granting that He might do that repair to fallen nature at any moment after her birth. God's power is not limited to only acting after the damage has actually caused defect.

it wasn't until after the Reformation that anyone was able to see what is obvious now, that Luke traces Mariam's ancestry back through her father Eli to David and ultimately to Adam himself (and thus Eve), showing Jesus to be the "seed of the woman" prophesied at the dawn of time.

While I greatly respect the theory that Luke was actually recording Mary's lineage, one must admit that this is a theory, i.e. understanding OF the passage something that is not actually IN the passage. It is a very reasonable one.*

But if one may carry into biblical exegesis hypotheses and theories that import notions not explicitly present in some passages, one is allowed to do it with other passages also. Hence, if the theory of Mary's sinlessness is not actually contradictory to anything in the Bible, and if the theory even makes other passages more comprehensible or fit together more fully, one is allowed to entertain the theory as a reasonable reading of it.

Naturally, we know all about the passages in Paul that speak of all men being sinners. Indeed, Paul says that in Adam all have sinned. But he doesn't mean Jesus, for Jesus could not possibly have been a subject of sin. Hence, Paul's words admit of exception.

In addition to the one male descendant of Adam who had human nature but did not have receive it with the sin of Adam, there could have been one female who did not receive it with sin. And while Paul casts an explicit parallel with Adam and Jesus (both made without sin), many facts cast a similar parallel with Mary and Eve: Mary's seed is the redeemer promised as the seed of Eve; Adam names her as "woman" and "Eve" who will be the mother of all living, while Jesus calls Mary "woman" and refers her motherhood to John as her son in faith, the first of many in faith; Mary believed the Angel Gabriel in obedience and humility, while Eve believed Satan in disobedience and pride.

Hence it is reasonable that just as Jesus was made human and Adam's descendant without sin, so was Mary. It was not absolutely necessary, but is both fitting and possible to God.

*I found out recently that there are other theories of Luke's genealogy as different from Matthew's: one suggests that there was a Levirate marriage after David, so that one lineage is biological and the other legal.

One point has occurred to me (I don't say this to be difficult) recently because I have been corresponding with a friend who is concerned about an unusual version of the problem of evil--namely, why God allows people to be born with a sin nature. This concern in this correspondent applies to *any* version of a sin nature, even something like the Greek Orthodox version according to which it is not inherited guilt or sin but only a "bent" or inclination toward sin. (A sort of kinder, gentler, concept of original sin, to which I myself actually subscribe, though I'm not Greek Orthodox on much of anything else!)

In the course of writing to him, I've been emphasizing the idea that God doesn't just *decide* that some people get a sin nature and others don't. And God certainly doesn't "stick" a sin nature onto some kind of pure soul, like a mark of Cain. Now, I don't claim to have it all worked out as far as creationism vs. traducianism, but obviously what I'm saying here sounds more traducian.

My emphasis has been on saying that God simply *allows* the natural processes involving what I call "psycho-physical laws" to take place and new people to come into existence. Hence, for God to prevent some human being from being born with a sin nature would be for him to prevent that person from being born at all. It's not like there's a "you" and a "sin nature" separately that God *decides* to put together, raising the question, "Why did God *give* me such a morally bad thing as a sin nature?" If God values the existence of the members of the human race, their lives, and human history, after the fall, he has to permit people to be conceived with sin natures or there would be no human race at all. And we can see that our existence is valuable, so this helps us to see why God allows us to be conceived with a sin nature.

For Jesus to be the one, single exception to all this is still consistent. Even without a detailed theory, one can see that, "Jesus is God Incarnate" would tend to make a difference to the applicability of a metaphysical law that "You can't be conceived in the human race after the Fall and not have a sin nature, because that's just how the world works."

To make Mary a second exception, however, does seem to raise further questions about why God didn't just do that for everybody, why God lets the rest of us go through life with a sin nature, etc. It makes it look more like that is a reasonable type of question.

Also, Jesus was conceived miraculously without the involvement of a man. That can be thrown into the mix as far as how Jesus' conception was different and the passing on of original sin (whatever one's specific theory of original sin). If these are metaphysical matters we don't fully understand, that might make a difference. But Mary was conceived by sexual generation, even on the Catholic theory. (IIRC, the Catholic version is that she was one of those late conceptions like John the Baptist. So some miracle, but still not a virgin conception.)

My emphasis has been on saying that God simply *allows* the natural processes involving what I call "psycho-physical laws" to take place and new people to come into existence. Hence, for God to prevent some human being from being born with a sin nature would be for him to prevent that person from being born at all.

I don't think that you are crediting what miraculous action represents when you say this. In order for a miracle, ANY miracle, to occur, all that is necessary is that (a) there IS some natural operation, such that the natural effect will certainly come about if nothing outside of nature intervenes to impede the natural causes; (b) God intervenes supernaturally, setting aside some element of natural causality so that the natural causes are deprived of their effectiveness. When this happens, because it is outside the natural order which we know through the "normal" order of cause and effect, it is abnormal, we know that it could not have happened had not some extra-natural cause acted. Hence, for any miracle, God might have let natural causes have their natural and normal effect, but doesn't. And vice versa, for any normal event, God might have intervened and set aside (some portion of) natural causes, but didn't.

And we know that speaking generically, for action and behavior in the world, God must normally intend that natural causes have their natural (and normal) effect, because otherwise there would be no way (for us) to intend an effect and then cause it to be. Nature is composed of natural causes (including us, for this purpose), which operate normally, most of the time, because you can't have a natural order without that.

But you can have a natural order and intervene for select, infrequent situations. Which, apparently, is exactly what God does. So, nothing prevents that God would miraculously intervene in one or two events of a certain type but not more regularly. Such as making a descendant of Adam not have the deformity of a "sin nature". Such as enabling a 90 year old woman to get pregnant. Such as making water spring from a rock when struck.

This does, of course, require that "being a descendant of fallen Adam" is not being metaphysically contradictory to "receiving a human nature free of original sin". Of course, Christ is adequate proof for that, I think.

Even without a detailed theory, one can see that, "Jesus is God Incarnate" would tend to make a difference to the applicability of a metaphysical law that "You can't be conceived in the human race after the Fall and not have a sin nature, because that's just how the world works."

No, I don't agree. God could, presumably, make beings with human nature who receive their human nature not from Adam, and they would not then be subject to Adam's sin, naturally. (God's power in making Adam and Eve with human nature extra-naturally does not exhaust his powers of making beings with human nature extra-naturally). But Christ is, specifically, a son of Adam, and of Abraham, and of David. He not only HAS human nature, but he has it from Adam. Therefore, BUT for the intervention of something added, he must have received the defect of Adam's sin as he received his nature from Adam. It is, I think, inescapable that in receiving human nature from Adam, Christ proves that it is possible to receive human nature from Adam and not receive Adam's sin in that nature.

Also, Jesus was conceived miraculously without the involvement of a man. That can be thrown into the mix as far as how Jesus' conception was different and the passing on of original sin (whatever one's specific theory of original sin). If these are metaphysical matters we don't fully understand, that might make a difference.

Maybe we need to track this more carefully, but I suspect that in the final analysis, Jesus being conceived without the sexual act is not relevant. On one plane, the fact that Jesus gets His human nature from Mary makes it irrelevant, I think, that it was not through sexual reproduction. Mary has Adam's nature from Adam's line in "direct descent" as it were, and Jesus has Adam's nature from Mary. Once you say it was from Mary, you imply that it was from Adam, which of course is true because it is all over the epistles that Jesus was from Adam. That the transmission of the nature be without the sexual act of reproduction has nothing to do with it: it is not via sexuality that our offspring are conceived with the corruption of original sin, it is because our NATURE is damaged, and that's all what we have to pass on to those who receive their nature from us. (Arguably, this also applies to those who are conceived without the sexual act in IVF; all the more so would apply if we ever succeeding in cloning humans from other than sex gamete cells since that reproduction would occur without any direct use of the normal "reproductive function" of man even displaced to a test tube.)

I also think that on ANY notion of the sinful nature which Adam passes on to his children that treats the sin aspect as a defect or deformity attached to human nature, that it must of course be metaphysically possible for God to simply "fill in" the defect or fix the deformity in any one that He chooses to act upon. If God could have made ONE such nature without the defect (Adam), He must of necessity be able to make others such. I think that this holds even for a traducian sort of belief, as long as it holds with there being such thing as human nature. For, whatever sort of causality that operates in one human being the cause of human nature in another, that causality cannot operate without God being present to and maintaining that causality, i.e. without God causing the causality to have its own natural order and effects. And if God is the one that makes it have its effects, He can correct it as to any lack.

The only sort of theory of original sin that does not admit of this, I would think, is one that requires that human nature as fallen is per se evil - which of course God cannot repair. But of course I would oppose any such theory, since no being can have a nature that is per se evil, not even Satan.

To make Mary a second exception, however, does seem to raise further questions about why God didn't just do that for everybody, why God lets the rest of us go through life with a sin nature, etc. It makes it look more like that is a reasonable type of question.

It is reasonable on one level, but it is no more reasonable (or answerable) than "why did God cure this person's cancer, but not mine?" Or "why did God miraculously save that person from certain death, but not my little girl?" Miracles are few and far between because there has to be a natural order; granted that, there can never be a sufficient answer for "why this one and not that one" without being able to look at it from outside the natural order, through God's eyes.

However, granted that God might do it for one human who is not the Son of God, Mary is the obvious candidate. There are so many ways in which it is fitting (if it is allowable at all), that would not ever apply to anyone else. Mary was for 9 months the human temple in which God resided, the ark of the promised one. Revelation allows us to draw a clear parallel with her as being the new Eve, who will "strike at his head", as does Christ in calling her "woman" on the cross: "woman, behold, thy son!". Mary was the one woman to whom God Himself owed honor under the Commandment. So, although we might be tempted to ask "why not for many others", to which the general answer must always be that "God provides for the natural order", we can never be tempted to ask "if for only one besides Jesus, why Mary?"

And if God is the one that makes it have its effects, He can correct it as to any lack.

That's what I'm questioning. I'm strongly inclined to think that, for non-theanthropic persons, anyway, it's bound up with some kind of process of freely willed sanctification in cooperation with grace, not solely an act of God. Hence, different from God's changing physical laws alone.

The only sort of theory of original sin that does not admit of this, I would think, is one that requires that human nature as fallen is per se evil - which of course God cannot repair.

I don't know if this is an un-Thomist thing to say, but I would think something could be such that it always *comes with* some evil rather than "being" evil.

As I say concerning Jesus, I don't have a definite theory, but he was a unique, theanthropic person, and it makes sense that this would mean that he was not a *fallen* person. It probably has something to do with the fact that, as the Son, his will was in perfect synch (of necessity) with that of the Father.

As I say concerning Jesus, I don't have a definite theory, but he was a unique, theanthropic person, and it makes sense that this would mean that he was not a *fallen* person. It probably has something to do with the fact that, as the Son, his will was in perfect synch (of necessity) with that of the Father.

I agree that Jesus was unique. While we can never have a comprehensive theory of the hypostatic union, we should be able to say some things about it, and one would be that the human terminus of that union could not be the subject of sin, i.e. he could neither actively commit a sin, nor could sin inhere in him. Given the latter, he could not receive original sin in receiving human nature.

But this just means that either (a) he could not receive human nature from Adam (and thus be Adam's descendant), or (b) it is metaphysically possible to receive human nature from Adam and not receive sin therewith. (a) defies numerous passages in the Bible, so we are left with (b).

I'm strongly inclined to think that, for non-theanthropic persons, anyway, it's bound up with some kind of process of freely willed sanctification in cooperation with grace, not solely an act of God.

I don't think this works. First, Adam and Eve were made from their first moments of existence in the state of perfection, including that spiritual perfection that included being in God's favor (what Catholics call the state of grace, but I am willing to go with any other frame of reference that admits they were not the subjects of sin). They had no part in willing that condition initially, they were just made that way. John the Baptist is accounted as receiving this state at 6 months gestation. Also, while I don't want to get bogged down into a Catholic-Protestant battle of exegesis, I think it is at least arguable that when in Acts and the Epistles there is reference to the conversion and baptism of whole households, one may reasonably infer that it applies to infants and small children as well as those capable of choosing. Granted, it's not explicit, but neither is it contradictory to anything said.

I don't know if this is an un-Thomist thing to say, but I would think something could be such that it always *comes with* some evil rather than "being" evil.

Well, this does partially get into a Catholic notion of original sin, but it's somewhat unavoidable, and I'll try to be restrained about it.

Whatever we want to ascribe to original sin, we can't ascribe to it that Adam and Eve with their sin ceased to be human beings, and became something else. That is, they had to have retained their fundamental reality as human beings, though they lost their innocence and their favor with God. Hence the reality that is the ongoing reality of sin as it persisted in them cannot but be something to consider as a damage or defect or stain on human nature. However closely we aim to associate it with that human nature (so that, for example, it is normally passed on through generation), we cannot let it be something that fundamentally altered them as human. (For example, if the condition fundamentally altered their humanity as such, then by that very fact, a person acting contrary to what "human nature" _originally_ identified as appropriate to the good of that nature would NO LONGER be contrary to the (fallen) new-"human" good: pride and lust and so on would now be the normative behaviors for the altered-humans, not sins against their nature. Which is absurd.)

As a result, the defect or stain is at least metaphysically speaking repairable: it is not so entwined into human nature (even as fallen in Adam) as to be irretrievable even by Divine action. But that's all that is necessary to say that God could repair it whenever He chose: ultimately, the kind of repair we are talking about could never be possible WITHIN the natural order, there could not be any natural causality which could correct the disorder; it must require supernatural agency. And so it must be - if God does it at all - subject to extra-natural rules and ordering as well: even if God were to set forth by divine covenant any USUAL standard upon which He engaged Himself to act so as to repair the disorder (say, at the moment of baptism, or at a moment of conscious choice by the human), He would not be bound thereby to never do so at any other time or circumstance in addition.

Further, the root nature of the act of generation, by which parents transmit human nature to their child, could not as a originally designed automatically carry with it such a deformity of transmission that human parent must of necessity produce sinful children. That is to say, if Adam and Even had not sinned, there is no reason to suggest that they would have generated children with sin in their humanity. So generation per se COULD occur without the transmission of sin. Which is both a reason for saying (as I claimed above) being in the state free from original sin does not objectively require a prior act of consent, and saying that the condition of transmitting human nature was also affected by original sin - i.e. damaged - but which implies that it too could be repaired.

Hence it would always be metaphysically possible (after the fall) for God to enable the transmission of human nature from parent to a child to not carry the defect of sin with it: merely by supernaturally willing that the child receive a human nature without receiving the disorder, God would superimpose on the natural act of transmission of human nature a corrective to the defect that our usual transmission of human nature carries. That is, given that God can correct the disorder in the nature AT ALL, He could also correct the disorder in the transmission of human nature to the child.

That said, I would like to lay out what I take to be the central Catholic position on grace and original sin.

Although we can conceptually consider what Adam and Eve would have been like without supernatural grace (what we Catholics call "sanctifying grace", but may just as well be understood as the soul participating directly in God's own life), God never intended that humans subsist WITHOUT that gift of grace: He designed men so as to be ordered to pursue and embrace knowing God as He is in Himself, and this end goal is intrinsically beyond any natural powers of a created nature, hence inherently requires supernatural aid. Sanctifying grace is just that aid. And He made Adam and Eve from the first moment of their existence in that grace: there was never any moment of their being in an innocent "state of nature" without grace and yet without sin.

In addition to their having this grace from the beginning, God so gifted them that the grace was intertwined into their beings as a gift for their whole race: in generating children, they would generate children gifted with that grace. (This could only sort of be a "natural" event, since God's coming to a soul and being present to her as the inner life of the soul oriented to God as He is in Himself is objectively supernatural in any case.)

Hence, when Adam and Eve sinned and lost their grace, they also lost the gift of grace for their race: they would be unable to pass on to their children the condition of grace for which we were designed from the beginning. The damage went deep enough to affect their powers of reproduction, not so that their children would not be human, but so that their children would receive with human nature the disorder that comes from losing grace (i.e. the disorder that afflicted Adam and Eve): their children would be damaged as if they themselves had committed the sin. "In Adam, all have sinned", not actually (not personally), but effectively: they have the effects.

Since God is omnipotent, and is not only the originator of human nature in every facet but has every power over it that is metaphysically possible, He has the power to repair the damage, either wholly or in part. In the transmission of human nature from Mary to Jesus, God repaired the damage utterly, in every respect, so that Jesus had NONE of the damage of sin. In us, God repairs part of the damage of original sin when he restores to us the state of grace, but He usually chooses not to repair concupiscence and moral weakness and mortality, which are further effects of sin. Yet in the eschaton these too will be repaired, so that all effects of sin will be in us completely eradicated. The Catholic position on Mary is that for her God simply advanced her - at her first moment - to the state of repair that we will enjoy later. There is nothing metaphysically impossible about this: He made Adam and Eve that way too.

First, Adam and Eve were made from their first moments of existence in the state of perfection, including that spiritual perfection that included being in God's favor (what Catholics call the state of grace, but I am willing to go with any other frame of reference that admits they were not the subjects of sin). They had no part in willing that condition initially, they were just made that way.

Yes, sorry to be unclear--I meant for those who are fallen. And perhaps especially those who are fallen and have already acted upon their sin nature--have actually sinned as opposed to being unborn children, etc.

I do find it plausible that there was an *incompleteness* even about Adam and Eve and that they would have been *confirmed* somehow in their blessedness and strengthened had they resisted the temptation. This is what Lewis pictures happening to Tor and Tinidril in Perelandra. They seem to enter a different plane after resisting the Tempter.

John the Baptist is accounted as receiving this state at 6 months gestation.

I never knew that that was Catholic doctrine, but if it's supposed to mean that John the Baptist had no further concupiscence or moral weakness of any kind at 6 months' gestation, I have to say that seems like a pretty big jump from the text.

Fwiw, we Orthodox, who have a high view of the Blessed Virgin not very much different from that of Catholics, do not accept the Immaculate Conception. This is not because we do not view her as immaculate, but because we do not hold to an understanding of original sin that requires the doctrine. As I think Kallistos Ware put it, we don't see the doctrine so much as incorrect but as superfluous.

I bring this up not to start a debate about it (frankly, the relevant doctrines of nature, sin, etc., are not things I've studied in any depth), but simply to say that a high Mariology isn't necessarily contingent on an Augustinian understanding of sin and grace.

Hence, it might be interesting to consider how a high devotion to the Theotokos developed in both E and W irrespective of the difference in underlying soteriologies.

I never knew that that was Catholic doctrine, but if it's supposed to mean that John the Baptist had no further concupiscence or moral weakness of any kind at 6 months' gestation, I have to say that seems like a pretty big jump from the text.

Sorry, Lydia, what I said was a little confused. John the Baptist is accounted as receiving the same benefits as baptism, when Mary entered the house; namely sanctifying grace. Not a correction of concupiscence. I was too brief in what I said.

Yes, sorry to be unclear--I meant for those who are fallen. And perhaps especially those who are fallen and have already acted upon their sin nature--have actually sinned as opposed to being unborn children, etc.

Fair enough. But my later point applies: if Adam and Eve had not fallen, their children would not have received the state of sin, they would have been born in grace - and without any consent on their part.

It is hardly a specifically "Catholic" position that opposes the notion that baptism only confers benefits with actual consent of the baptized: Orthodox, Assyrians, Lutherans, and Anglicans all admit of infant baptism providing real spiritual benefit, not merely a symbolic benefit. (It seems to me that the position that it requires active consent would unfortunately cast into doubt all baptisms where the person retains some shred of concern, anxiety, or uncertainty as to whether they are doing the right thing - which would greatly damage the Church.)

I am quite comfortable with admitting that baptism for a person old enough to have committed their own personal sins entails a difference. The grace of baptism cannot be received by someone who repudiates Jesus or the sacrament, so doing the ceremony will be of no benefit. But allowing that a person old enough to have a position for or against baptism requires that they not be opposed to receiving it, has no clear application to one who cannot have any formed choice against it because they are too young. There remains at least the possibility that no active opposition is sufficient grounds for the grace to be received.

I do find it plausible that there was an *incompleteness* even about Adam and Eve and that they would have been *confirmed* somehow in their blessedness and strengthened had they resisted the temptation. This is what Lewis pictures happening to Tor and Tinidril in Perelandra. They seem to enter a different plane after resisting the Tempter.

I find it very plausible too. It seems unlikely that the testing would go on permanently. For one thing, it seems clear that Adam and Eve did not generate children before their temptation, (for the child would have been conceived with grace). And if the period of temptation were to be ongoing, then there would be the incredibly odd prospect of one line descended from Adam in which no sin inheres at all, and a second line from Adam in which sin inheres in all from conception. Which seems implausible.

On the other hand (not to dismiss it too glibly), if Adam and Eve had not sinned, it seems more likely that each of their children would also have had to bear a period of temptation at some point in their lives, and we would possibly then have sin among some and not others, anyway. (And, an interesting question would arise as to whether the form and power of human generation received from Adam in one whose prior line had no sin, but who sinned himself, would remain able to pass on undamaged human nature because that's the generative power he received from Adam? Or would he be in the same boat as Adam was after the fall?)

I was thinking concerning Jesus, and not meaning to be disrespectful by the analogy, that his possession of a divine nature as well as a human nature at least gives us theoretical entities to "play with" in talking about why he had no sin nature. For example, one could say that it is analogous to matter and anti-matter--that the absolutely stainless sinlessness of his divine nature "canceled" or "annihilated" any sin nature he would otherwise have inherited from Adam at the very instant of his conception. Not that one would have a very clear idea what one meant by the words, but it would be something in the nature of the sketch of a theory, though not a theory available for any human to whom the hypostatic union doesn't apply (such as Mary).

I recognize that approach. (And I thank you for being very delicate about my Catholic sensibilities, but I don't think I am quite that fragile ! :-) Nor Mary, either, in her Catholic sensibilities :-)) .)

I have thought about the same thing, or at least tried to. I do think that in the Fathers and Doctors there are comments running around that seem pretty similar to that notion of "annihilating" the sin nature. Athanasius, maybe, (though there's just a hint in my memory, not something specific).

For example, I don't have any sympathy for the notion (which I have seen) suggesting that "Mary had to be free of original sin so that Jesus would not inherit it from her". That seems to be entirely footless as a hypothesis. Surely if Mary could be conceived without receiving it from parents who had it, so could Jesus.

Similarly, I am very hesitant to credit the notion that Mary "had to" be free of original sin in any especially strong sense: I can easily see Christ being conceived - and free of original sin in virtue of his divine nature - without that condition in Mary.

I still think, though, that we are faced at least plausibly (even if not definitively), that any theory that imposes a strong condition of retaining the sin nature in the transmission to a mere human being would perforce end up with the conclusion that God the Son could not receive human nature from the line of Adam. Just working at it as a metaphor based on physical or other mundane transmission, (analogously, admittedly), any such strong condition would have the divine nature annihilating the human nature along with the sin. If the sin is so definitively attached to humanity as to defy God's power of intervention in the transmission from human person to human person, then it is just so a problem in the transmission from a human being to God Incarnate.

I see this is especially true under the theories that admit God as the necessary agent in the direct creation of each human soul. Given that, the transmission of sin amounts to God's concrete decision to NOT correct the defect in the nature He is thus creating. But I don't think that this necessarily gets the traducian view home scot free here, because however the new human nature comes to be, ALL causality, including secondary causality, is ultimately at God's dispositive and providential behest, subject to His command (excluding that which is inherently impossible, of course).

Furthermore, in uncertain matters metaphysical, I would argue that the proper mode of proceeding here is to assume God's power until it is SHOWN to be impossible, rather than the other way around. So, when constructing a theory for the transmission of sin with the transmission of human nature, one would assume that the nature of the event is subject to God's power to intervene, absent a specific showing, (or at least a concrete reason to claim) that it is logically or metaphysically impossible, rather than "we don't know that it is possible, so we assume not".

Furthermore, in uncertain matters metaphysical, I would argue that the proper mode of proceeding here is to assume God's power until it is SHOWN to be impossible, rather than the other way around.

In answering various versions of the Problem of Evil, I've found it often useful to *conjecture* (subject to correction in heaven or from other argument, of course) that things are so bound up together that God "can" do less than we might otherwise think he can because of the metaphysical nature of things like creaturely freedom, which he has chosen to make part of the nature of certain beings in creating them.

So, for example, it seems to me quite conceivable that it isn't metaphysically possible for God to *communicate* his attribute of being *incapable* of sin to a finite, free being. That may be an incommunicable attribute.

Hence, there is no point in faulting God for not making Adam both sinless and *incapable* of sin, like Himself.

Or, another example, because of human freedom (and I actually think this one is true; it isn't just a weakly held conjecture), God *cannot* drag people into heaven by force who are shaking their fists at him. Hence, there's no point in blaming God for not "just saving everybody." People are free to be damned if they insist, because God made them free in their nature and salvation wouldn't be salvation if gotten by force. Sort of like you can't really be metaphysically married by force. You can't be made to love God and have the beatific vision by force. It's a nonsensical idea.

You can see how that strategy is at work in the line of argument I have suggested here. And in a way it's a form of humility (or at least intended to be), because what I tell people when I bring forward these ideas is something like this: If even we with our puny human intellects can see how this *might* be the case (insert conjecture here), which would mean that God is not unjust for not doing things the way we would prefer (because it would actually be contrary to the decision he has already made to make the kinds of creatures we are, which is ultimately worthwhile), then we should not presume to throw out some doctrine or have our faith shaken by this particular "Why doesn't God ______?" question that you have raised.

In answering various versions of the Problem of Evil, I've found it often useful to *conjecture* (subject to correction in heaven or from other argument, of course) that things are so bound up together that God "can" do less than we might otherwise think he can because of the metaphysical nature of things like creaturely freedom, which he has chosen to make part of the nature of certain beings in creating them.

I see. This is one of the general strategies of theodicy. Another general strategy is to argue that what seems evil is, when looked at in the larger picture, just a portion of the good.

Nor is it necessary to use only one or the other, both can be used.

I am very cautious about trying to argue against a theodicy, for the overall purpose is to the good. Nevertheless, I think there is a different effective strategy for explaining the differences with which God endows various men, for that isn't really explaining evil, is it explaining variation. Surely we can come up with satisfactory accounts for the universe being all the better for there being some as great geniuses, some as great athletes, some as great statesmen, and some as humble carpenters who are neither athletes nor geniuses nor statesmen. If the created order is better off for there being some who are not-great, not even in one way, is it not at least possible that the created order might be better off for there being one single undisputed greatest creature of all, who rolls together the greatness of a statesman and a genius and an athlete? For, in addition to abundance and variety being some of God's purposes in creating, so also is order.

Well, I don't insist on it. It seems that we should be a little cautious in saying what God is capable of and what is impossible to him, and not expect to get very far beyond what He has shown us.

Nevertheless, I think there is a different effective strategy for explaining the differences with which God endows various men, for that isn't really explaining evil, is it explaining variation.

For the most part, I go that route, too. I did the same in this same conversation w.r.t. the related question, "Why do some people live long lives and develop virtues like perseverance while some die young?" There is, I argued, no one-size-fits-all route to sanctification, and the highest good of each creature can be obtained even if the specific qualities that each brings to the glorified state are different.

I'm just not _inclined_ to think that God can, by miracle, cause a human being (who isn't God Himself) to be born without any bent to sin at all. Nor even, for that matter, "zap" the sin nature (including concupiscence) out of a person at conversion with no further cooperation from the person. Where this leaves babies who die is a different speculative question, so one might say I've just created a second problem by the attempted "solution" to the first, but I have a couple of speculations about that as well, none of which may be correct.

I'm just not _inclined_ to think that God can, by miracle, cause a human being (who isn't God Himself) to be born without any bent to sin at all.

Do you suppose that even in heaven we retain an inclination to sin?

Seems to me that for that situation, at a minimum, God can (and does) arrange things so that the blessed person - however fallen and sinful they had been, like St. Paul - ceases to be open to sin at all. The "mechanics" of it are of course open to debate. Thomism has an account of the Beatific Vision that makes sin no longer feasible, not exactly the same way that Christ in his human nature was not open to sin, but something analogous I would say.

Many Christians, and not just Catholics, allow that what we live here on earth, after conversion, believing in Jesus, receiving the Holy Spirit, and living the life of faith, hope and love, amounts to a sort of vestibule to the life we live in heaven. Certainly not in every respect, of course, but also certainly in SOME respects. St. Paul seems to be at great pains to say this: all of his "you are no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit", for example. At least in part, and "through a glass darkly", we are being born up by God's power to live 'above ourselves' so that it I no longer live, but Christ who lives in me and it is Christ "who works in me to will and to do". My point is that God is indeed changing us, correcting our flaws, making us more whole, more like who we were meant to be from the beginning. More like Adam and Eve were, actually. It's on a continuum, with the end goal being to abide by Christ's word: "be you perfect". One need not expect to actually get there in this life, but it either has to be here or hereafter, there is no other way to heaven.

In the lives of the saints, we find men and women so given over to holiness that (through God's power) they overcome massive and intense temptations, sometimes seemingly with ease. One might reasonably describe them as having subdued concupiscence and pride, (or rather, God has in them), and while we need not say it intending that they have COMPLETELY subdued concupiscence so that nothing at all remains, we do mean that they have come very close.

There is no objective reason to suppose that God's power that is achieving this is of a completely different order than His power by which he makes a one sufficiently rectified as to enter heaven.

If we admit that God can take one who was born with original sin and make him "perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect" so that they are suited to heaven, we have to suppose that God is somehow "burning away" the defects that make them imperfect. And even if this does not necessarily consist in the one so perfected leaving behind concupiscence BEFORE heaven, at least they will leave it behind IN heaven. So we have to suppose that there is some way for one who had been born with original sin to be cleansed not only of the guilt of the sin (and of the guilt of all his own personal sins), but even of the effects of sin including concupiscence.

But as we agree, that is the result of a process. Longer in some than in others. More dramatic in some than in others. Unique to each person, as God works with and within the soul of man. It's a mysterious process of sanctification that involves our willing cooperation with God. It isn't some kind of instantaneous zapping, done without our knowledge or involvement. And in any event it comes *after* we (sadly) start out with the sin nature. Glorification is a final answer to the sin nature, not put in place of it from the outset.

And even if this does not necessarily consist in the one so perfected leaving behind concupiscence BEFORE heaven, at least they will leave it behind IN heaven. So we have to suppose that there is some way for one who had been born with original sin to be cleansed not only of the guilt of the sin (and of the guilt of all his own personal sins), but even of the effects of sin including concupiscence.

If anything, the doctrine of Purgatory sort of "drags out" even more the stage between earth and heaven and the process of purification. If anything, I as a Protestant should be more open to divine "zapping" away concupiscence than you as a Catholic, since Purgatory seems like the ultimate assertion that these things take a long, gradual, mysterious, and painful process. Though I have to admit that I'm open to the possibility of Purgatory.

In any event, I think we'll agree that, in the normal case at least, the process of sanctification-leading-to-glorification is extremely *complicated*. It's not simply a matter of God's instantaneously taking all the bad stuff away. And I've thought for quite some time that this isn't just God's dragging it out willfully but that somehow it's *our* slowness that makes the process slow, which means that we are necessarily involved somehow. It isn't, then, strictly speaking a miracle, though it is (in myriad ways we cannot fully understand) God's doing.

"that's a very interesting point. I had not been aware until just recently that Catholics and Orthodox have quite divergent soteriologies W/R/T original sin."

Yes, the main divergence occurred during the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian controversies. So if the Augustinian views are seen as being made "official" in the West at the Synod of Orange in A.D. 529, and if the main points of Marian devotion were already well established by that time, any later developments on each side would have taken their respective views into consideration.

NM, I am sure I must be misunderstanding you. Surely the soteriology didn't diverge very _strongly_ during the period through the first 8 ecumenical councils, (i.e. up to the year 869 or thereabouts): they all took place in the East, and were well attended by the Eastern bishops and patriarchs, and presumably would have either resulted in a clear schism well before 1054, or the doctrines and teachings were largely conformable, East and West, to each other.

But as we agree, that is the result of a process. Longer in some than in others. More dramatic in some than in others.

Sure, I agree that it usually is. And usually involves some sort of cooperative effort on the part of the person saved. God deigns to give us humans a participatory place in causing good, and this can only be if participating in good takes, which allows us to will and to do what God asks.

But I think you will agree with me that not everything in the economy of salvation is the result of a process.

For example, it is clear that when God picked Saul to be king for the Israelites, it was His through-and-through sheer beneficent choice to bestow the blessing on Saul, there was no build-up, and that choice (effected by lots) was more or less out-of-the-blue. When God chose Moses to lead the people out of Egypt, there was nothing in Moses character to that time that showed he was the sort of person God needed to choose: God's choice and God's power are what made Moses suited to the task, and God's action turned a more-or-less non-entity (he had been in the desert for decades) into a lion able to stand before Pharoah and make demands, pretty much at one swell foop. (Same also, about God's choosing to save Moses, out of all the little boys of the Hebrews: there was nothing about Moses that made him special.)

With Jonah, who might as well be named "the unwilling prophet", God doesn't even bother to make Jonah's preaching to Ninevah brilliant and persuasive in the ordinary sense, nor did he have wonders and miracles as proof; He just makes it have its effect anyway. I.E. without the usual and customary causes, more or less at once.

Admittedly, these are a far cry from making a person free from the concupiscence of original sin. But they also exhibit another feature: when God chooses someone to do a great work, He often does it prior to their being the right tool for the task, and God is the one who _makes_ them into the right instrument. And He doesn't necessarily ASK the person, either: He didn't ask Moses, and he sure didn't ask Jonah. I am not saying that God would ever bring someone to salvation AGAINST their will, but since His grace is the initiator of a person's being willing and ready to convert, it matters little whether God moves them as an adult or as a child or gives them grace even as a baby: either way, it isn't BECAUSE THEY ASK that He gives it, it is because He gives it that they cling to Him in response.

The East never accepted the Augustinian theology of sin and grace, in part because it remained largely untouched by the Pelagian controversy, which is what prompted the hammering out of Western soteriology in the first place. It seems that Eastern and Western soteriologies developed separately after that, but as neither side had dogmatized its view, they were seen as theologoumena (It no doubt helped that the more extreme aspects of St. Augustine's doctrine were rejected at Orange).

I'm not sure the views were ever seen as "conformable" -- there does seem to be a certain amount of tension between them from the beginning. But the tension was not viewed by either side as a "dealbreaker."

I'm not sure the views were ever seen as "conformable" -- there does seem to be a certain amount of tension between them from the beginning.

In reading up on this, I keep seeing conflicting accounts of when the disagreement arose. For example, this is from the Council of Carthage, @418:

It has pleased the Synod to decree that whosoever denies the little ones newly born from the wombs of their mothers when they are being baptized, or asserts that they are baptized for the remission of sins, but that they have inherited no propatorical sin from Adam obliging them to be purified in the bath of renaissance (whence it follows that in these persons the form of baptism for the remission of sins is not true, but is to be regarded as factitious), let him be anathem.

For no other meaning ought to be attached to what the Apostle has said, viz., “Sin entered the world through one human being [and death by sin*]” (Rom. 5:12), and thus it passed over into all human beings; wherefore all of them have sinned, than that which the Catholic Church diffused and spread abroad every where has ever understood those words to mean. For it is on account of this Canon of the faith that even the little ones too, who are as yet incapable of committing any sin of their own to render them guilty of any offense, are truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that what sin they inherited from the primordial birth may be purified in them through the process of renaissance.

And this is pretty much what the Latin Church continues to affirm. Here is a clarification on it, by the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

404 ...It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act.

405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence".

I don't think this departs from the Carthage canon.

And the Council of Trullo confirms the canons of the Council of Carthage:

But we set our seal likewise upon all the other holy canons set forth by our holy and blessed Fathers, that is, by the 318 holy God-bearing Fathers assembled at Nice, and those at Ancyra, further those at Neocæsarea...In like manner those of Sardica, and those of Carthage: those also who again assembled in this heaven-protected royal city under its bishop Nectarius and Theophilus Archbishop of Alexandria.

Yes, it does get confusing, given that some of the differences are quite subtle. It's been a long time since I studied the issue, but I do remember that it received a very good treatment in Jaroslav Pelikan's history of doctrine, in the volume in which he covers the Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian controversies, and also in his volume on Eastern Christianity from the same series.

NM, I saw one account on the Orthodox idea of original (or ancestral) sin, that I suspect is colored a bit off, maybe you can clarify.

It rejects the Catholic claim that babies are conceived with any guilt of Adam's sin, even the sort of non-personal guilt that the Catechism above describes. However, it says instead that Adam's inheritance so damages us that when we act, those actions are morally vitiated by the defects that we inherited. This applies to ALL persons, and all of their acts (which come forth from their energies) who have received from Adam the fallen state. And so even babies are subject to the guilt of personal moral failings, since all of their actions are thus vitiated, and it is the grace of baptism that corrects this.

Although it is true that we do not accept any notion of an inherited guilt, I've never heard or read before where the effects of the fall affect infants in the manner described. The way I've always heard it explained was that while infants are subject to the effects of original sin, they have no culpability, either personal or inherited. One article puts it this way:

It is true that baptism is the washing away of sin, and one could say that it seems senseless to baptize a child if they have no inherited guilt to wash away. However, Christ’s sacrifice, in to which we are baptized, was a sacrifice of His whole life as a submission to God— “not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42)—and His death on the Cross not only washed away our sins, but also destroyed death itself. When we are baptized we are baptized into His life and death (Romans 6:4), and we become co-beneficiaries of a life which finally brought God and man into a union of love and a harmony of will. The infant is initiated into that union. This initiation will include the forgiveness of their sins, but is not limited to that forgiveness. The life and death of Christ, which reverses the primordial, generational, and personal falleness of this world, is what the child enters through baptism.

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.

Reverse the order of the digits in 31, then type the answer using letters instead of numbers, all lower case. (required):